Waiting
by Leni
Summary: Set roughly 200 years before Jaenelle's arrival. How did Daemon cope while he waited for her? - LANGUAGE WARNING. 2/3. Centuries before they were made flesh, a man held to his dreams.
1. Chapter 1

**DISCLAIMER:** Anne Bishop loves them more.  
**SUMMARY:** PG-13. _(Hearing the news was the first taste of hope in centuries.)_

_Written for **fanfic_bakeoff**. **Prompt:** surprise._

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WAITING

_by Leni_

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**I.**

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He lived for _her_. Only for her.

The dream, the hope; the wish closest to his heart, warming and stitching back together what little remained untwisted. For her, he walked into the razor-sharp battlefield Dorothea had built across Terreille, and for her he would endure the next fifteen centuries if necessary.

Tersa had seen her, in some gleaming court that was now a footnote in the memory of the short-lived races. But he remembered.

He remembered everything.

Lords and Ladies in their prime, the hosts giddy to be boasting the presence of both the Weaver and Hayll's Whore to the other aristos. The gaudy jewels dripping from necks and wrists, displayed with more pride than the true Jewels that gave the Blood their strength. The loud laughter, the smell of spilled wine and perfume-splattered sweat. The pale faces of those doomed to scurry between the tables, men and women being pawed without hope of retribution (oh, how he'd taken revenge in their names!). And in the middle of the decadence, Tersa's unfocussed eyes struggling to meet his; her hair unkempt and wild, a black veil that kept their conversation private.

Daemon had knelt before her, eager without reason. Behind him, he'd heard the murmurs and surprised gasps. Shocked Ladies protesting that their perversely stubborn toy would yield before a broken witch. He'd wanted to sneer at them, start the quiet spells that would rid the world of some of Hayll's stain.

But his body hadn't moved, his hands held captive by hers.

Tersa's intensity demanded absolute attention, drew him to the words she still hadn't said.

Three words: "She is coming."

And he'd believed her. In his heart, in his mind, in the darkest crevices where the Sadist dwelled - Daemon had believed the promise.

Because he'd always lived for her.

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**The End**  
01/09/10

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	2. Chapter 2

_Centuries before they were made flesh, a man held to his dreams._

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II.

"She is coming," Tersa had said.

Three words. The sweetest of hopes. To him and Yasi, Tersa had given the only promise that kept them proud and unbending before the High Priestess and her greedy bitch-queens.

She was coming.

IWitch/I was coming.

How the other witches had moaned and fretted, how they'd howled when Tersa's web was found shattered. Even Dorothea had called every surviving dark-jeweled Black Widow to Draega, threading tangled webs that failed to shed light upon the prophecy. The Darkness wouldn't reveal one detail of its daughter's arrival.

Then a year had passed; utter silence. Then, a decade, and no witch rose to challenge Dorothea's reign. By the turn of the next century the twisted Queens across Terreille had breathed in relief. A fool, they'd called Tersa; a broken witch gone mad. Then they'd laughed as decades passed and Witch didn't come.

Daemon laughed at them.

And waited.

…and waited.

In the privacy of his thoughts, he pictured her. A faceless womanly body being shaped in the abyss, the sculptor wise and patient and unworried by human time notions. Invisible fingers would spin her hair; they'd paint her eyes with the hues of nature. The exact colors would be a surprise, except for her Jewels: bathed in darkest night, they would crown the woman he'd been born to serve.

His lover already. Like Daemon was hers.

Not that century, and not the next, and not for five hundred years since Tersa's vision; but his Lady Iwas/I coming. Safe in her cocoon of dreams and promises, the daughter of the Darkness waited for the right time and place to make her entrance.

The Queen of Ebon Askavi. The Black-Jeweled Queen.

Dreams made flesh, the oldest stories called her.

A fitting name.

Because everything else was a living nightmare.


End file.
